case: (Default)
Case ([personal profile] case) wrote in [community profile] fandomsecrets2015-11-22 03:58 pm

[ SECRET POST #3245 ]


⌈ Secret Post #3245 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 067 secrets from Secret Submission Post #464.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Re: This is terrible because . . .

(Anonymous) 2015-11-23 01:53 am (UTC)(link)
I started to say it half-seriously, because wow Tolkienian/Gygaxian fantasy is full of racial essentialism. HPL and REH are a little different.

But then I realized that condemning fantasy for its roots was kind of like condemning other cultural constructs in a way that was...very like the racism that I was denouncing. So I made it a joke.
tree_and_leaf: Watercolour of barn owl perched on post. (Default)

Re: This is terrible because . . .

[personal profile] tree_and_leaf 2015-11-23 09:33 am (UTC)(link)
Tolkien is definitely inclined to be a racial essentialist. However, he's also very different from HPL - he was appalled by the Nazis' anti-semitism, and he also wrote about how shocked his parents were by the open racism they encountered in South Africa. He really ought to have thought more deeply about the implications of his assumptions about particular races and peoples had 'particular gifts' or particular geniuses. He was a nice, kindly, well-meaning conservative man of his time (and indeed probably slightly more liberal on race than his political views on other matters might suggest).

But that's still a million miles away from HPL. I don't suppose Tolkien ever came across HPL's verse "On the creation of the n----", but I feel confident in saying that he'd have considered it to be the disgusting piece of racism that it is.